Category: Institutions

Code Red on University Autonomy

There is no aspect of university autonomy that is more fundamental – in the British Commonwealth at least — than the right of each institution to select which students it chooses to admit. Along with financial autonomy, staffing autonomy, and financial autonomy (that last one being under increasing pressure these days), the right of institutions to choose which students to teach is fundamental to the Canadian higher education system. At no time in Canadian history has a government ever tried

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Opening January 2026: Inside One of the Biggest University Mergers in Australia

There’s a huge story going on right now in Australian higher education, one that hasn’t made many ripples outside the country yet, but really should have. In January of 2026, two of the country’s major universities will be merging. The old research intensive University of Adelaide, one of the country’s so-called sandstone — meaning prestigious — universities, will be joining with the newer post Dawkins i.e., created in the early 1990s, University of South Australia, which began its life as

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Data Flourishing for Universities and Colleges (Governance Edition)

Yesterday, we wrote about how to make institutions flourish through better use of data…for management. But just as important as management is governance, and here, we would argue, a very different set of issues is at play. Let’s start at the top, with Boards of Governors. As Alex has previously argued, Board members are fundamentally part-timers. They spend maybe 5-8 days worth of time a year doing their Boardly duties. They need to be kept focused. Giving Board members reams

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Data Flourishing for Universities and Colleges (Management Edition)

Hi all. I’m writing jointly today with colleagues Andrew Drinkwater and Pat Lougheed from Plaid Analytics, a company with whom HESA is teaming up to offer services related to improving the state of data collection, analysis, and use on campuses across the country. We’re not going to spend time giving you an outline of what we’re offering (although do click here for more if this interests you), but we do want to talk about how we see data environments evolving

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Strategy Horizons at the Top

I’ve been working on a project recently, looking at current university strategic plans around the world, and particularly those of leading “world-class” universities. One of the key things I am looking at is what you might call “strategic horizons”— how long do institutions see or plan ahead? My sample for this is the Top 100 universities from the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), done by the Shanghai Rankings organization (minus the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, which is

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